A Small Discovery
by yellieisarobot
Summary: The Dark Side of the force is innately addictive – even more so for the young Padawan Revan and her friend Malak. Oneshot.


_**Author's Notes: **Just a little one-shot I did when trying to write my other KOTOR story. One million deadly points to whoever can figure out the stupid metaphor I did for the title. :D:D! _

_Mainly Malak's point of view, hinting (rather strongly) of an attraction between the two. _

* * *

Malak awoke with a start, feeling a presence in his small alcove. He squinted around the darkness, looking for the source of his sudden stirring. He was not unduly worried about danger – the Jedi Enclave he was currently living in felt more at home than the one back on Coruscant. He jumped suddenly, a dark shadow appearing directly in front of him.

The shadow laughed quietly. "Honestly, Malak, you'd think at seventeen years old you'd learn that the dark can't hurt you." Malak breathed a small sigh of relief, _it's only Revan._ That relief, though, was soon encompassed by irritation.

"What are you doing here?" He grumbled, turning over in his bed. "Master Zhar was like a Rancor today, and I'm exhausted."

A small bulb of light ignited in Revan's hand, and dimly lit the small room. With barely enough room to walk four paces, it belied the actual height of Revan, making her appear a lot taller than she actually was. "Oh come on, lazy. I have something to show you."

Malak's curiosity was piqued, but his tiredness prevailed. "Whatever it is it can wait till tomorrow." He mumbled, pulling the sheet over his bare shoulders. "What time is it anyway?"

"About an hour till dawn." Revan replied, pulling the sheet off him and exposing his linen sleeping trousers. Malak groaned and feebly attempted to rescue his sheet, but to no avail. "Come on, I can't show you during the day, the Masters wouldn't let us. Besides," she added, grinning. "This'll be our first adventure since leaving Coruscant. Come on Malak, it'll be worth it, I promise." She said, layering her voice with Persuasion.

"All right, all right, no need to use Persuade, I'm going." Malak looked up at his friend to see a triumphant smirk plastered on her face. She threw him his robe and headed for the small window. "Are we not using the conventional exit routes?" He said, pointing at the door.

"Hey, it's not my fault you never bothered learning how to use a stealth field generator." She said, making her way through the window. "Master Vorak is out there talking to one of the Padawans." She looked at him. "You plan on getting dressed or what?" With a quick grin, she hopped out of the window. Malak quickly shrugged on his brown Padawan robes, grabbed his lightsaber and followed Revan out of the window.

Landing softly on the grass, he looked around for Revan. He saw her crouched behind a wall, beckoning him over. He obliged, ducking and running over to her. "Where are we going?" He hissed.

Revan smiled and put a slim finger to her mouth, silencing him. Without a word, she leaped over the wall and headed west. Malak sighed and followed her, keeping an eye for any passing Masters _Although_, he thought with just a hint of envy, _they're probably all asleep_.

The clouds above him streaked the sky in long lines of purple and blue, turning to lighter shades of pink and yellow to the east, where the sun would rise in but an hour's time. He caught up to Revan and smirked at her. They were friends since the first met in Coruscant over 4 years ago. Both younglings and both in a whole other league when it came to the Force. He grudgingly admitted that Revan was more knowledgeable in the Force than he, Master Kreia had said so on many occasions. But while Revan studied for hours, her thirst for knowledge insatiable, Malak had spent his time honing his skills with his lightsaber. He was in excellent physical condition, and could rival a few Jedi Knights with his expertise. Many of the other Padawans didn't like Revan and Malak, while they excelled in everything they did, they were headstrong and arrogant. They didn't mind though, they had each other for company.

"I overheard the elder Jedi saying I could be a future champion of the Jedi Order." Revan said conversationally, but Malak detected a hint of pride in her voice.

"Really?" Malak buried the jealousy building up in inside of him. Was he not champion material?

"I'm glad my talents are finally being noticed on this backwater planet," She motioned around them, only fields of dried grass for miles. "I thought that after we were sent here I'd be made into a Jedi knight in no time at all," Revan sighed, and Malak could see a tinge of anger etched on her face. He was not overly startled, but anger was not becoming of a Jedi; such thought led to the Dark Side.

He quietly noted Revan's subtle remark that _she_ should be a Jedi knight, not him, and decided against answering. Instead, he glanced at his companion, taking in her petite features and almost swan-like movements. Upon first look, you would not think of her as the Jedi type; her heavy-lidded eyes and wicked smile belied her. She was almost the opposite of what you would consider the model Jedi. Headstrong, arrogant and stubborn, Revan made up for those faults with her exceptional abilities with the Force. Sometimes Malak indeed felt quite inferior to her. Not that he'd ever admit it, though.

"So are you going to tell me where we're going, or do we get to play twenty questions?" Malak asked after a moment's silence. Looking down to avoid any… mess the Kath Hounds left, he almost crashed right into Revan, who had stopped suddenly.

"We're here," She said.

_Here_ was what seemed to be a large burial mound. Large obelisks surrounded the hill, and what could only be described as a sloping pathway led down to a huge stone door, marking the entrance way into the hillock. "What is this place?" Malak breathed.

"That's what we're here to find out," Revan said curtly, and began to make her way down the slope. Malak quickly followed suite and soon he too was touching the door – urging it to open. It was like something was calling to him, beyond the door, and he was only inches away from it.

"Do the Council know about this?" He asked Revan, who seemed to be entranced by the door; she was staring at the faded glyphs and pictures on it as if spellbound.

"What?" She shook her head out of her reverie. "Oh, I'm sure they do know, Dantooine's a small planet, and a tomb like this wouldn't go un-noticed, especially this close to the Enclave. Although I doubt they think much about it."

"And you do?"

"Of course I do." She snapped. "Now be quiet. I need to think." She stood directly in front of the door, hand absently stroking her cheek, and staring as though she was looking straight through it. Malak spent an impatient fourteen minutes waiting on her to stir, before igniting his Lightsaber and slashing at the door. "Malak!" Revan shrieked, "What are you doing?!"

"Got bored," He said, thoroughly enjoying hacking away at the door. Revan rolled her eyes. _Boys. _

Sure enough, a few more swipes of the blade and door opened. Malak stopped mid-hack when he saw the door move, and stuck a hesitant head into the gloom. Revan pushed past him, uncaring of whatever peril may lie within.

Wary of the threat of danger, Malak kept his blade ignited and stepped through the doorway. His eyes adjusted to the dark and he could see he was in a hallway of sorts. The grey walls reflected the yellow light of his Saber and he saw the dim silhouette of Revan at yet another huge door.

"I don't think brawn can get us through _this_ door," Revan said curtly, when Malak had come up beside her. She brought her slender hand up to the door, letting it hover there for a moment. She closed her eyes, and exhaled deeply. When she opened them again, the door was open and an ancient droid stood in front of her. If Revan was surprised, she hid it well, for she began talking to it, much to Malak's disbelief. It didn't appear to understand her; it was speaking different dialects very quickly. Malak had never been one for alien languages, but Revan was not daunted at the effort it took to converse with the droid.

It took a few trials and error, but eventually the droid had begun talking in a variation of the Selkath language – one that Malak knew haltingly. Revan asked it many questions, and almost every question was replied with a hazy, evasive reply.

"Obviously, it wasn't programmed to tell us." Malak said. Revan didn't reply, instead she rolled her eyes at his stating of the obvious.

Malak felt as though he was standing there for hours, listening to Revan and the droid blether on and on about who knows what. He began to drift off, looking around the room they were currently in. Four doors, North, South, East and West. Idly, he wondered where each one led to, but soon allowed his eye to land on his companion. The Jedi had always been taught to restrain emotions that led to the Dark Side. Hate, greed, lust, passion…. Malak had always wrestled with his emotions; jealousy when someone preceded him in the Enclave, anger when he was cowed by his superiors, and more recently, lust for Revan, who was becoming more and more attractive as they got older. Jedi weren't allowed to love; such thoughts can cause a Jedi to be overcome by the Dark Side. But Malak scoffed at the idea of love; maybe it was the Jedi teachings that forbade love, or his own viewpoint; Malak never really thought much of it. He admired Revan's power, her sharp wit and the almost effortless charisma she possessed – that much he knew. Revan appeared to like him; she was the one who came up to him upon arrival on Coruscant, when they were both Younglings, full of hope and determination to become Padawans. She was the one who always initiated the conversations in the beginning, and it was Revan who only talked to him thereafter.

He fell out of his reverie when an increasingly impatient Revan hit him lightly on the shoulder. "Are you coming, or are you going to stand there like a Bantha?" She asked, already walking towards the door on their left.

The room on the left was guarded by a large droid; similar to the one Revan had talked to. But this one was violent, and began shooting at them both upon sight. Revan flicked her hand and lazily destroyed the droid within seconds. Malak was in shock. He had barely ignited his lightsaber when the droid fell to pieces, victim of Revan's Force technique. He stared, open-mouthed, at her. Revan shrugged innocently and smirked, before heading up to the computer panel.

It looked as though it hadn't been used in millennia. The screen was dusty and the keypad was just as bad. Revan grimaced as she started typing in frantic, jumpy movements – very conscious of exactly how dusty and dirty it was. "Hm," she pondered. "I don't understand this language." Malak feigned shock, and looked over her shoulder. The characters were totally unrecognisable. "Not shocking," Revan continued, "when you consider the builder droid took some trial and error to understand."

"Put your data pad into that slot there," Malak said, a sudden inspiration coming to him. Revan obeyed, and after a swift kick to the terminal and a fair share of swears, the computer had a recognisable language displayed.

"This is Youngling stuff," Revan sneered, entered the combination with ease. "What imbecile doesn't know the live-giving seed worlds?" The seal broke, and Revan took her data pad out, walking out of the room, straight towards the opposite door.

Another Guardian droid was located here, and Revan dispatched it easily. Malak was amazed. _How had she gotten so powerful?_ Pushing back thoughts of her falling to the Dark Side, he arrived at Revan's side. She had already done the same as in the room to the west, and was now entering in the death-giving seed worlds. "Done!" She said, taking the data pad and putting it in her robe pocket. "Let's go."

They continued through the third door. Malak, expecting another droid, was curious to see another door at the end of a long passage-way. That door wouldn't budge, however. Revan went back to the builder droid and queried why, but it had no response. When she came back, she had a steely glint in her eye. The door remained shut, even with her unrelenting Force attacks. Not even Malak's lightsaber could open it. She began pacing back and forth in front of the door, racking her brains for a solution to get through.

Malak had a bad feeling about this. There was something… _wrong _about all this. "Do you really think this is a good idea?" He asked, voicing his concerns. Revan simply shot a glare at him, not even slowing down her pacing. "If the Council hasn't gone in here, then I think there's a good reason," he continued. Yet she still didn't respond. A silence fell upon them. Malak looked down at the slabs of stone beneath his feet, and pondered. Why didn't the Council come here? What was beyond this door that Revan coveted so? She must have found something in the Enclave sub-levels. Malak grinned inwardly at the recent memory of Revan sneaking into the sub-levels without any of the Master's knowledge. She had come back, exalted and exited at the find of all the knowledge there.

Revan appeared to have thought of something, for she stopped her pacing and walked up towards the door. Malak felt a stab of momentary panic. "Revan," he said, a hint of urgency in his voice. "I feel that if we go through this door, the Order will surely banish us. We're not supposed to be here." Revan simply looked at him and smiled slowly. Still looking at him, she waved her right hand and the door slid open. A sense of inevitability surrounded Malak. _She always was too stubborn to listen._

Malak stopped dead at the sight of what Revan had sought. An ancient artefact, no doubt, that had opened with the door. A hologram of what appeared to be a map appeared over it, showing 5 different planets. He was speechless. Revan, however, inhaled deeply, filled with awe.

"Malak," she breathed, "I think we've found something."

* * *

_And you guessed right, I have absolutely NO perception of time. I seriously have no clue how old Malak and Revan were when the found the Star Maps. Suck it up, Canon fans. xD_

_Reviewing is always helpful, please. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more? ;D _


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